“If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.”

You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.

I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.

I don’t think I ever sing the same way twice. The blues is sort of a mixed-up thing. You just have to feel it. Anything I do sing is part of my life.

Don’t threaten me with love, baby. Let’s just go walking in the rain.

In this country, don’t forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There’s no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it’s the worst kind of hell for those who love you.

The difficult I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.

New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size.

You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave.

There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.

The only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.

Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.

I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.

I don’t think I’m singing. I feel like I’m playing a horn, What comes out is what I feel.

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

I don’t know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel’s Bolero. Too bad – this is how I hear war.

Whoever the master is whom you prefer, this must only be a directive for you. Otherwise you will never be anything but an imitator.

Nature is commonplace. Imitation is more interesting.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

Man is an imitative creature.

Art imitates life and, sometimes, life imitates art. It’s a weird combination of elements.

You know what I hate the most? People that imitate owls.